1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to toners for use in electrophotography.
2. Related Art
In response to demand for energy-saving in electrophotographic image forming apparatuses, to reduce energy consumed in the fixing device, whose consumption of electric power is the highest in the image forming apparatus, low-temperature fixing to perform image fixing at a relatively low temperature is promoted. To achieve low-temperature fixing, it is necessary to melt a toner and a mold releasing agent (hereinafter, also denoted as a releasing agent) at a relatively low fixing temperature, and it is contemplated to use a toner and a releasing agent (wax) which exhibit a low melt viscosity. Further, to obtain a toner responding to such a low fixing temperature, it is necessary to use a releasing agent exhibiting a relatively low melting point and toners obtained by use of releasing agents exhibiting a low melting point (hereinafter, also referred to as a low-melting releasing agent) were proposed, as described in, for example, JP-A Nos. 2000-321815 and 2000-275908 (hereinafter, the term, JP-A refers to Japanese Patent Application Publication).
However, it was proved that there arose problems that banded or streaked image defects were often caused in fixing of images formed by toners using such a low-temperature releasing agent.